Leon Benson’s first book publication, Letters of Gratitude: i am Because WE Are, will officially launch with a panel and celebration at the Indianapolis Liberation Center during Common Unity 3. While the book was published in 2024, Benson and the publisher have not yet had the opportunity for an official launch and celebration.
What is even more excitinga bout the event is that we will be acknowledging the recipients of Benson’s letters, including a representative from the family of the late Honorable Judge Shatrese M. Flowers, an Indianapolis native, DePauw University graduate, and IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law graduate. Judge Flowers vacated Benson’s case in 2023 without prejudice after the Marion Conviction Integrity Unit’s intervention brought to light a host of injustices that led to Benson spending over half his life behind bars, and a quarter in solidarity confinement.
We will also be expressing our gratitude to the family of Kasey Schoen. The IMPD framed Benson for Kasey’s 1998 murder despite knowing the real perpetrator. Benson’s lawsuit claims the evidence pointed to another man who worked with police leading to drug ring convictions. Benson’s suit claims police purposefully concealed evidence to shield the other man from prosecution. They withheld key evidence because the real killer worked with the police. At Common Unity 2.0, Benson and Kolleen Bunch, Kasey’s sister, spoke for the first time on their joint lawsuit against the city and the cops in what might be the first time the exonerated victim and the family’s victim united to seek justice for the victim.
Watch the Common Unity 2 Press Conference here!
Copies of the book will be available for purchase–and autographs–at the Indy Liberation Store, situated at the front of the Liberation Center, that evening!
According to Colin Jenkins, the Founder and Chief Editor of the Hampton Institute, a working-class think tank:
“The overwhelming majority of prisoners in the U.S. are mostly victims of a class/race war perpetrated by the capitalist owning class through its system of unjust laws. Despite their widespread victimization and demonization, prisoners have long embraced a selfless and thoughtful yearning for redeeming humanity through liberation to demonstrate prison bars can’t hold the spirit. Leon Benson’s Letters of Gratitude is not only an inspiring read but a direct reflection of this embrace.”
From the Back Cover
Because of police and judicial misconduct, white supremacy, and the capitalist system overall, Leon Benson spent nearly 25 years incarcerated, 10 of which were spent in solitary confinement—which is globally recognized as a human rights violation—for a murder he didn’t commit. Then, on March 9, Benson was liberated from the notorious Pendleton prison in Indiana. Officially exonerated and his conviction overturned, Benson walked through the prison doors to a community that had been fighting for his release for years. Released exactly one year after his liberation, Letters of Gratitude is centered around nine profound, punctual, and expansive dispatches Benson wrote from behind prison bars when his exoneration seemed increasingly likely and imminent.
Each letter overflows with the reality of Ubuntu, an African philosophy based on collectivity rather than isolated individuality—and that guided African liberation struggles from Zimbabwe to Tanzania—that Benson came across during his in-depth studies of wide-ranging topics. In addition to the nine letters that appear unaltered, included is a 2021 letter Benson wrote to the family of the man he was falsely imprisoned for murdering, a 2023 letter thanking the ongoing list of those who compose the we that is Benson, a preface to introduce the letters, and a foreword by his comrade Derek R. Ford that offers some personal, political, and historical context and suggests one way readers can engage with Benson’s texts: as a set of what Walter Rodney referred to as “groundings.”
“Each letter of each word, each fiber of each page, each thought of each reader; these are elements of the common unity that, if we organize and realize, will win a world where true freedom and justice prevail.”
Featured image: Copies of Leon Benson’s first book at Vernon T. Bateman’s first solo exhibit in Indianapolis. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center.
